Video Game Programmer Uses Tech to Investigate Spike in UFO Sightings
Speculations regarding UFOs are at an all-time high, and one man in the center of the strange phenomenon stands out in his pursuit of separating reality from fiction.
Mick West, a former video game programmer, spends his days trying to debunk the conspiracy theories regarding UFOs, Popular Mechanics reported.
West analyzes UFO videos putting all his knowledge as a game programmer into use, CFI reported. He uses simple math to make 3D objects move in a virtual space to break down the video evidence featuring any flying saucer and understand whether it's an extraterrestrial object.
West reverse-engineers the alleged UFO videos to inspect the object's function.
In the last decade, West has handled about 1,000 alleged UFO sightings, Popular Mechanics reported. His passion for the topic is so much, that he has done a deeper analysis of almost 100 of these cases voluntarily.
West gets approached by people to look into certain sightings and takes scoops from official and leaked government reports. He also keeps a tab on social media for any news about UFO sightings. The former programmer is a regular visitor of UFO databases like Enigma and MUFON, which also gives him material to work with.
West believes that many investigators looking into the alleged sightings, go into the analysis hoping to find something extraordinary, Popular Mechanics reported. "The people who are into UFO investigations are so interested because they’re looking for something extraordinary," he said. "I’m just looking to find out what something actually is, whether it’s extraordinary or not. I don’t have a preference."
West applies a thoughtful and logical process whenever he handles an alleged UFO sighting, Popular Mechanics reported. He pulls the video into applications like Invisor, which displays and compares technical information about video, audio, and photo files.
"You drag in the video and you get all this information, things like the original date it was recorded, the resolution, the frame rates …sometimes you get location as well," he explained.
Another thing to take into consideration is the place from which the video was shot, Popular Mechanics reported. West once was investigating a video he shot while flying from his home in Sacramento, California, down to Pasadena.
The video featured a small, white, elongated object that seemed to be passing over the mountains. He put the video in the free online tool FlightRadar24. The application helped him to figure out what exactly was in the air when he located this object.
With the application, West got a map of all the objects near his flight. He connected the location of the mysterious object with a plane that was flying near his flight. This aircraft had taken off from Los Angeles’ Van Nuys Airport shortly before his video and it was ascending.
West's last step was to use the software he had designed named Sitrec, Popular Mechanics reported. Sitrec is a situation recreation tool that integrates flight data and video from any source—and uses satellite imagery to recreate situations.
"I set the camera to point from my plane to the other two. One of them matched exactly. It was a small Cessna," West said. "This confirms that this was the plane I was actually looking at."
Sometimes West does not even apply these analytic tools to debunk a UFO sighting, a simple investigation does the trick. Once, an individual reported seeing mysterious lights in the sky. The programmer's intuition was that the visuals came from searchlights. He called the local town, who corroborated his intuition with the finding that a tree farm in the location had just installed attention-grabbing searchlights.
West's investigations have either ended with the conclusion that the objects have no extraterrestrial connection or remained unsolved, Popular Mechanics reported.
In 2017, West looked into a video published by The New York Times depicting a flying saucer. The former programmer looked into the movement of the camera, how the UFO could have matched the rotation, or the possibility of a glare in the camera lens, but to no avail. He applied many tools and techniques to get a solid answer regarding the object featured in the video but did not succeed.
West believes that to get a conclusive answer regarding this alleged UFO sighting, he needs the original radar data instead of the analysis the government released, Popular Mechanics reported. The original data will allow him to recreate the sighting in three dimensions.
"In most cases, what you really want is to have two videos from two different angles. Multiple sensor data is kind of the gold standard," he explained.
Throughout all his investigations, West strives to maintain accuracy and look over every possibility, even if it sounds mundane, Popular Mechanics reported. "This is a big, big issue in UFO investigations. Instead of trying to eliminate something, you just move possibilities up and down the list," West explained.